Is It a Plane!? RPG Core Book

The comic book role-playing game that replaces dice rolls with doodles!

Draw your heroic feats... BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!

Play is fast and frenetic. Players act simultaneously! Lay down your panels, create comic book pages and let the Editor (Games Master) decide from your drawings what happens next.

How Do I Take Actions Without Dice?

Actions of any form that have dramatic consequences are created through rapidly made doodles. If you want to take mulitple actions, you can, you just need to draw them in time.

Success is determined by what the Editor (Games Master) thinks you have drawn, based on prior dialogue, descriptions and the context of the panels of other players.

You have panels of varying sizes; the bigger the panel, the greater its power and statistic effects (positive and negative) it can have. But use too many larger panels, and you get through the issue faster... and you only have 22 pages to achieve success!

Everyone draws their actions at the exact same time, so the only waiting for players is for the Editor to describe how their actions combine together on the page.

But I Can't Draw!

Don't worry! You are allowed to give the Editor clues whenever you draw, telling them any statistics you are using, like your Ranged Attack (energy beam), what characters and situations (the one statistic the Editor controls) are present and pointing out any narrative features of the scene that have already been established. You can also write anything that would be a label in a comic book or onamatopoeia such as POW and KRAK to help you punctuate action.

If you can draw a stick figure, two lines and a vague box, you can draw shooting energy beams at a car. As to what that does in terms of the story, the Editor will decide.

1 minute is the typical drawing time, so artistic skill is not required and rarely possible.

What Do I Get?

The 168 page Is It a Plane!? book has everything you need to both play the game and run games as an Editor.

This book contains:

How to Play the game!

How to make your own heroic (or villainous) Protagonists!

Sample Archetypes to customise for play!

Information on how to create your own comic book settings from a multitude of eras and genres.

Everything you need to know to be the Editor (The Games Master).

A ready to run adventure with a 1960s superhero setting and a team of six Protagonists, ready to fight the dastardly villains.

How Can I Play the Game if I Need to Draw?

The book has advice and templates for creating your own Panels for game-play.

Psychic Cactus Games also provides Is It a Plane!? Panels in three different decks for the three Power ratings/card sizes on DriveThruRPG.

You should also be able to use Virtual Tabletops that allow players to draw onto the map. This will likely require some house rules to conform the drawing to grid based play and to adjust drawing as appropriate. (I am starting work on a free PDF to cover guidlines for this.)

I know the author from university and have been following his rpg work. I have been looking for a new superhero rpg and IIAP? Meets my needs perfectly. An easy to pick up system and I could days stating characters as it's so much fun to do!!!
The artwo [...]

Firstly, the book. The book is a lovely homage to the comic arts, as well as setting out the rules of play in a concise fashion, accompanied by demonstration images akin to those which you yourself will be drawing. There's also a pretty nifty story arc [...]

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